“Sir, this might hurt a little bit!”

An actual quote from a procedure, where Ian used his cheap multitool pliers from his backpack to extract a nail from a hand in the ER. Nobody else had pliers or would step up and try it.

So I decided he needed a nice pair for the next time.  Congrats on getting your Masters degree, passing your certs, and all you've accomplished! Praying for the right opportunity for the next part of your life journey with Caroline.

Julie got me this adorable toy gun for Christmas!

It's a tiny replica Sig P320.  You can load the magazine, cycle rounds, pull the trigger, and use the slide lock.  Fun to put together and play with! ;)

Cool bag fabric and color

We have a program at work where you can recognize your co-workers for various things.  I helped on-board one of my peer managers in our product support team and he sent me some CogBucks $$$ to use in the company store.  They had a duffel bag made out of this material so I snagged one.  It's great for just throwing in whatever I want to bring along.

Cravy’s cool candle centerpiece on her table

It makes her candles last sooooo much longer she says.

All the boys enjoying puzzles

Cody and Jet are into the kind of puzzles where you try and figure out how to take them apart.  Like nails bent together with rings, etc.  It was fun to see them all trying to figure them out while we were at Cravy's house on Christmas Eve.

We moved the celebration on to Stef’s house

She always has the place so cute for us❤️

Julie set me up nicely with some new pliers!

ALL of them! 🤪

Julie got me some special Alton Brown coffee!

She also got me a little gadget that lets me make my own reusable Keurig coffee pods.  Perfect!  I love his flavor description, "& a dash of old library book", hahaha.

Christmas Eve morning fun at our house

We had John, Savannah, and Andy over for the annual opening of presents.  Good family fun time❣️

YouTube summed me up well…🤪

Andy’s winch is just comically huge!!!

Percy puts it in perspective and agrees…

Chestnuts resting on a moistened towel

Jewels roasted us some chestnuts to try.  Scored, soaked, roasted, rested, then peeled.  Quite the project.  Interesting, but not worth all the work 🤪

I like all the candles in the window

The neighbors redid the original farmhouse of the neighborhood, and did it so well!  I like the moon over the garage roof too!

The fog rolled in with the moon and Christmas lights

It made for a cool view of the neighbor's house!

Jeep sticker check…

These are some of the spots where I have some new stickers or badges.  I don't really get into the whole badge/app thing, but there are a couple really hard ones I've done so I decided to add those. Trail 15 at Windrock is crazy… and trail 16 was so hard they had to take it off the badge app.  I even made it up that one (TWICE) without winching! :)

Andy and Sophie made shelves for his apartment

Tuns out, they are Percy approved❣️

In case you wanted to see my new shocks and stuff

I got some cool close-ups of my new shocks, springs and bump stops.  It's good to have the lift and control back for sure! The bump stops are Fox, and the springs are Rock Krawler.

Julie and I went to Jungle Jim’s

We thought we'd try some chestnuts and a rose apple or two.  The apple was really sweet and yummy.  Julie needs to roast the chestnuts, and that's quite a process… Time will tell on those. Haha.

John modeling the fit for the day! 🤪

We had to try John’s holster and some other stuff!

John shot this cool pic of some of the hardware we played around with.  His friend was over and brought some cool shotguns along for the fun.  

I love this sunrise and Christmas tree light pic!

So pretty!

Of course we had to try out the new cowboy holster setup!

 

Then we headed to Silver Spur

We've been talking about shopping there for some gear and clothes for years.  We finally did it and sprang for hats and holster.  We pooled our fun savings together and splurged.  It was a great day of talking over life, houses, relationships, and other fun father-son stuff and moments.  

Then Saturday, John and I had a great boys day out!

We started with breakfast at the new Breakfast Club in Springboro.  Just as good, and closer, but minus the coffee roaster smells. Haha.

I took my girl out for a hot date!

We managed to fit in a nice dinner (Bonefish) and a show (Hamilton) after I got back from Grand Rapids last Friday.

The last ones fell off…

So I decided I better go with some recovery hooks that used a cotter pin to keep the nut from backing off.  Cheaper two, win-win.  We will see how they hold up…? I sure do love the split style d-rings.  So much easier and convenient when you need them quickly.

Dinner entertainment

I found a fun dinner, entertainment and recreation place in downtown Grand Rapids.  It seems every corner had another unique mode of decoration.  I thought the waiting area was pretty.

It was fun to win our impromptu dart throw-off!

I still have some skills.  I always like a good game of cricket.

Then I traveled to Grand Rapids to end out the year

We took in some food and fun in between our planning meetings for next year :)

It was fun to be there!

I got to see Laura give Ian his white coat as he commences his PA career❣️

A pretty spot along the trails :)

 

Packing up to head home.

I was putting air back in my ties and noticed something amiss… Do you see it.  No biggie, I carry spares, checked the torque on the rest of them and headed safely home!

Enjoying the hills off in the distance

It was such a pretty day.  50º and sunny.  Back home, the snow had already started…

Right back up the trails we go!

If you’re going to rip your steering bracket off your axle…

…this is a good place to have nearby.  I "might" have ripped my steering bracket right off my axle on the trails over a weekend of hard stuff.  Good news, we banded together, used a ratchet strap to hold it in place for a bit, and gently drove off the trails to this shop.  It was literally a "have lunch here while we weld it back on for you" kind of situation.  Zoe of course had all the love she could want, and we had a great meal.  $80 and less than two hours and we were headed back out to the trails for a restart of day 3.  

Congrats on your masters degree Ian!

So stoked for you and future!

60 inches!

Andy scored a sixty inch pipe wrench from facebook! It's cartoonish in size and weight!  Something like 50 pounds! 

Day one of Windrock complete…

…Enjoying the stars out away from town!  So many!  These days, we can barely see many of them.  It used to look more like this when I was a kid.  Another reason to get out on the trails, enjoying the scenery while camping. :)

Stretchy stretchy…

It still doesn't seem like this kind of flexibility and stretching should be possible.  Mechanical works of art I guess. 🤪

Testing out my new suspension components…

I normally like to shake things out a bit before hitting the trails, especially hard ones. One thing led to another this time around, and it just didn't work out.  The work was finished at 6:30p the night before and I hit the road at 7a the next morning.  So, first chance I got, I made sure it would still articulate and nothing was hitting in either direction for both the front and rear axles.  It was working just the way it should.  I maxed it out nicely on this rock.  Notice the rear driver wheel floating in the bottom pic…

I do trust the folks that help me with my builds for sure, so it worked out!  I got some REALLY NICE shocks out of the deal at a priced similarly to normal ones.  Win-Win.

1 ride, 5 rigs, 4 Davids!

Four out of five of the drivers were named David.  The one that wasn't had a brother AND a dad named David. And yeah, we're all going in a different direction at the moment I took this shot…

Joke of the day: "What a difference a Dave makes"!

We all made it out onto Panther Rock

It was the one moment when everyone that was there for the weekend was on the trail all at the same time.  

Leading a hard group ride…

A weekend ago, I got the chance to lead a hard club ride at Windrock.  We were blazing trails on some of the black trails we hadn't tried before and nobody had been on since the snow a week or so ago.  Pretty and fun!

Julie’s tree looks nice with presents and a sunrise

Before and after?!

My springs and shocks were overdue for replacement… You can see the before on the left.  Not the bottom of the "M" which is the Metalcloak logo on the silver fender well liner.  The top of the tire has got to be at last three inches higher off the top of the tire (after picture on the right).  Crazy part is, I only had a three inch lift.  It was all but GONE!  That'll be my new excuse for any obstacle I struggled to climb earlier in the year 🤪

Moonlight?

I took this shot of Julie's tree with the lights in the room and the tree all out.  It was a fill moon night.  There were a couple LEDs on in the room, hence the blue and green on the ceiling. I thought it made for an interesting picture?!

Celebrating Christ’s birth…

…with all the pageantry

We enjoyed our Christmas program with Andy and Sophie❣️

Julie’s beautiful tree this year. With twinkle!

One of my pics made it into the club calendar :)

I took that middle pic on the left of my rig while we were waiting for the guy in front of me who'd lost his front drive shaft in the mud hole… We then became good friends as he rode around the rest of that day and the next with me.  Fitting that the pic of my rig is in August. :)

Fun coincidence…

Isaac discovered and sent me this album/artist at the same time that I had stumbled onto him and was working on my own playlist of Peyton Parrish's work.  I found him on a country gospel station, that led me to his sea shanty music, then I realized I was hearing some worship songs I knew and so I looked up all his stuff.  Quite the variety, but some of it is really good.  More of a harder rock style, so not for most, but some of my nephews and I like that vibe a lot.